Movie Review: Foxcatcher

Foxcatcher
Directed by: Bennett Miller.
Written by: E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman.
Starring: Channing Tatum (Mark Schultz), Steve Carell (John du Pont), Mark Ruffalo (David Schultz), Sienna Miller (Nancy Schultz), Vanessa Redgrave (Jean du Pont), Anthony Michael Hall (Jack), Guy Boyd (Henry Beck), Brett Rice (Fred Cole), Jackson Frazer (Alexander Schultz), Samara Lee (Danielle Schultz), Francis J. Murphy III (Wayne Kendall).

Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher is a precise and exacting drama – a film where the smallest, quietest gestures often speak the loudest. There isn’t a scene out of place, not a performance that hits a false note. It is a film based on a real life murder – but oddly, it doesn’t quite seem to build to that murder as inevitability, like many movies would. The murder, when it comes, is a little out of left field. There is no catharsis to it – just sadness that takes on tragic proportions in the final scenes that oddly, should be rousing, but come across as purposefully hollow.

The film centers on two men who were born with extraordinary, but completely opposite, gifts – but spend their entire lives searching for approval that they will never receive. Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) has already won an Olympic gold medal at the 1984 games, and is now training for next year’s 1988 games. He is the younger brother of Dave (Mark Ruffalo) – who won gold at the same games. The two love each other – in their way, but they are competitive, and there is bitterness and resentment that flows both ways, but is never commented upon. This dynamic is established in a brilliant opening sequence where the two train together, and without saying a word, you know everything you need to about these two and their relationship. Mark is shy and sullen – Dave is outgoing and charming. Everyone loves Dave – no one even remembers Mark.

The other main character, aside from Mark, is Jan du Pont (Steve Carell) – who was born, into the “richest family in America” – and seems to be the only descendant. When you have that much money, you can afford to be eccentric and no one will really question you. But eccentric would be a kind word to describe du Pont – who is clearly delusional to a huge degree, and begins the movie somewhat unhinged – and will only become more so as the film moves along. He reaches out to Mark – he wants him to train at his new, state of the art facility – Foxcatcher – he has built on his grounds. He will get a nice place to live, a lot more money than he’s used to, and can handpick the others he wants to train with. Du Pont also wants Dave – but Dave doesn’t come along at first. Unlike both Du Pont and Mark, Dave is married and has kids – he’s put down roots, and he doesn’t want to leave. At first, everything seems to be going good between Du Pont and Mark – but things slowly unravel. And when Dave eventually does join the trio, he also pushes the other two to extremes they otherwise wouldn’t go to. Dave doesn’t do anything to overtly undermine Mark, or challenge Du Pont’s authority – but he doesn’t have to do anything overt, for everyone to know what is happening.

The three central performances in the film are all among the best of the year. Tatum has never been better than he is here – it’s a quiet, restrained performance, and clearly the central one in the film. He plays a man forever in his brother’s shadow, who both craves his attention, and then resents it when he gets it. He wants to be more than just Dave Schultz’s little brother – and this could be his only chance. Mark is awkward around Du Pont, and around the world in which Du Pont lives in – he tries desperately to fit in, and never can. Carrel also does career best work. By now we shouldn’t be shocked when comedians do great dramatic work – they do it all the time – but this really is an extraordinary transformation. Yes, his nose has been covered in makeup, his teeth have been changed – but the performance goes far deeper than makeup. Du Pont, like Mark, has had to live in the shadow of an older relative – in this case his mother (Vanessa Redgrave), who loves her, horses, and hates wrestling and Jon’s obsession with it. In two scenes – one where she calls wrestling a “low sport”, and another where she simply observes Jon at wrestling practice, she completely breaks him down. Carell breathes heavy throughout the movie, is prone to make speeches about America and what it means, and he low level temper tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants. His speeches are ridiculous, and help to underline (although not so heavily that the film becomes preachy) the themes of American exceptionalism and capitalism that run through the movie. In many ways, Ruffalo’s performance is the most difficult of the trio – as both Tatum and Carell are holding a lot back, never really vocalizing much of anything. They get along, for a time, because they do have some things in common – things that Dave doesn’t. Dave is used to getting his way – just like Du Pont is – but Dave gets it because his is charming, and good at what he does. In a scene late in the movie – the one that really does setup the murder that will happen shortly (that hadn’t been setup too much before) – he sells out his brother Mark, and directly confronts Du Pont, at the same time, with both of them in the room, and with a smile on his face the whole time. Dave is the most instantly relatable character – the most openly charming – but like the other two, he is flawed – just in a different way,

This is Bennett Miller’s best film to date – following up Capote (2005) and Moneyball (2011). He works slowly, and methodically – and here he has found material that is perfect for him. There was a lot more dialogue in Miller’s previous two films – that spelled themselves out a little bit more. Here, the themes are buried in body language – where a lot if going on when seemingly nothing is. The editing is precise, the cinematography moody and atmospheric, the score subtly helps set the tone for the film. For two hours, the film is about these three characters circling each other – sizing each other up, and applying their various power plays. The murder, when it happens, is shocking – but also deliberately anti—climactic. I’m not sure it really means anything greater in the larger scheme of the movie. But the very end of the movie really does – and drives the point of the movie home with devastating effect. This is one of the best movies of the year.

Movie Review: Moneyball

Moneyball ****

Directed by: Bennett Miller.

Written by: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin based on the book by Michael Lewis.

Starring: Brad Pitt (Billy Beane), Jonah Hill (Peter Brand), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Art Howe), Robin Wright (Sharon), Chris Pratt (Scott Hatteberg), Stephen Bishop (David Justice), Brent Jennings (Ron Washington), Ken Medlock (Grady Fuson), Tammy Blanchard (Elizabeth Hatteberg), Jack McGee (John Poloni), Vyto Ruginis (Pittaro), Nick Searcy (Matt Keough), Glenn Morshower (Ron Hopkins), Casey Bond (Chad Bradford), Nick Porrazzo (Jeremy Giambi), Kerris Dorsey (Casey Beane).

How do you compete in Major League Baseball when you’re a GM whose owner has set your player salary budget below $40 million per season, and the New York Yankees are spending well over $100 million? You can’t possibly outspend the Yankees or the Red Sox or any of the other major teams, and as Billy Beane finds out, there’s no loyalty in baseball. It’s a business, and players will go where they can make the most money. After a terrific 2011 season, that saw the Oakland A’s make it to the playoffs (hard to do in baseball), their three best players leave for greener pastures, and there’s nothing he can do about it. While trying to replace these players, he meets Peter Brand, who has a new way of looking at players – a way that flies in the face of everything other teams are doing. He wants to ignore all the stats that GMs normally look at, ignore their fielding, ignore their physicality and off field behavior and look at just one state – on base percentage. The more people get on base, the more runs you score. The more runs you score, the more you win. By looking at players in this dispassionate, scientific way, Brand believes that the A’s can actually build a winning team. And Beane, who has nothing to lose, decides to trust him.

Moneyball is a different type of sports movie – one where the emphasis is not on the games being played on the field, but on all the talk that is happening off the field. I can’t think of another movie where the GM is the star of the show, but that is precisely what makes Moneyball seem so fresh and original. Never has so much talk about statistics seem so exciting.

Billy Beane was a failed big league player – a kid who right out of high school looked to be the next great player – he could field, he could throw, he could run, he could hit and he could hit for power, and those are the five tools every scout looks for. But for whatever reason, Beane never really made it as a major leaguer. That is key in determining why Beane does what he does as the GM of the A’s – he knows all the smoke being blown up his ass by his scouts is just that. Every one of them would have loved to have a young Billy Beane on their team, and every one of them would have been wrong. When he asked Brand if he would taken him Beane in the first round, Brand tells him he would have taken him in the 9^th round, offered no signing bonus, and expected the kid to accept his scholarship to Stanford. That easily could have been the better thing for Beane in the long run, but dollar signs flashed in his eyes, and he took the easy way – and he failed as a result.

Brad Pitt is perfectly cast as Beane. He is funny and charming, and for much of the running time you think that Pitt is simply putting on another one of his movie star performances – something he can do better than just about anyone else right now. But Pitt’s performance is sneaky, much more subtle than the thousand watt smile and easy charm lead you to believe. He is fiercely determined, hates losing and under all that exterior charm, lies a stats nerd, not unlike Brand himself. Pitt wins you over, and then goes deeper than you expect him to. The other major performance in the movie is by Jonah Hill as Brand, who doesn’t have the charm that Beane has, but has the intelligence. He knows the stats inside out, and he knows what they mean, and how to use them. He needs someone like Beane to trust him, and get the deals done that need to get done. The two help each other out, learning for each other. As for Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe, the A’s manager, what can you say? He’s grouchy and pissed off in every one of his scenes, and while it’s not a deep performance, he does what is required of him.

The screenplay is one of the best of the year. Steven Zallian and Aaron Sorkin are two Hollywood heavyweights of screenwriting, and together they have crafted a movie that doesn’t skimp on the details of what they are doing, but still has dialogue that sings. Moneyball almost plays like a heist movie, where the plan is set in motion, and then carried forward. Like something like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, you see the inner workings behind something we all know, but never really thought about.

For director Bennett Miller, Moneyball is a triumph, just like his breakthrough film Capote was. That film was deeper and darker than Moneyball, but this one is more purely entertaining. He keeps the movie humming along at its brisk pace, never getting lost in details or letting all the talk bog the film down. This is a step forward for him, even if they movie does run a scene or two too long in the end.

For the most part, I have grown tired of sports movies – especially underdog stories of teams that shouldn’t have been able to compete, who somehow defy the odds. But while Moneyball is one of those stories, it is different, because it’s about how they built this underdog team, and how they did not consider themselves underdogs. True, the Oakland A’s have not won the World Series under Billy Beane – there is still a point where having a hell of lot of money trumps sound strategy – but he still changed the way the game was played, if not on the field, then in the boardrooms.